Mass Effect 3.5B: Taste the Rainbow (Story and Ending Discussion; Spoilers!)

[Joran]

And this is exactly why it's so terribly bad.

Because this "new beginning" renders the consequences of everything the player has done irrelevant, because they were all grounded in and determined by the structure of the universe as it was.

I'm sure they'll handwave it away in the extended cut by having them rebuilt, but that's ****ing stupid since it's well established in the lore of the games that no-one knows how to build a Mass Relay, and anyone suggesting that they should maybe study how to do it is treated like a barking loon. (It also renders their destruction irrelevant except as a Big Shiny Explosion for the ending). In short, "fixing" it will actually break it worse.

I understand this frustration, which is why I hated the transition from KotOR1 and KotOR2. However, your choices don't really hinge on whether the Mass Relays exist or not. In fact, by making the blowing up of the Mass Relays less impactful, it means the fate of the Rachni, Krogan, and Quarians are much more important than in the doomsday Thousand Year Dark Age scenario.

Also, I think I've read from one of the writers that better FTL is going to replace the Mass Relays, not a rebuild of the relays. In that case, it's certainly plausible:

1) The building of the Catalyst was a concentration of the galaxy's best scientists around a single project. It's possible among their dealings that a group of them could discover a principle that could lead to a better FTL without the static build-up and fuel requirements.

2) Without the cheap and easy Mass Relays, there's a huge incentive to finally research and produce that better FTL.

Anything they do will be a handwave, but FTL will always be a handwave. For instance, in Star Trek, the main means of travel was the Warp Drive. The Borg came along and suddenly there's Transwarp. With DS9 came the wormhole.